


Stay Alive

by the_authors_exploits



Series: AJ's AUs [11]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Badass Tim, Gen, Protective Tim, Zombie Jay, bro feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 03:59:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16055114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_authors_exploits/pseuds/the_authors_exploits
Summary: Jason's a zombie, Tim tries to keep him safe





	Stay Alive

There’s a deady right in front of him, just sitting and digging into a corpse, and Connor lifts his rifle; the sights line up perfectly at the base of the thing’s head, ready to disconnect the spine from the brainstem. A perfect kill shot.

Connor breathes, steadying, and his finger tightens on the trigger.

There’s the press of cold metal to his temple then, a gun barrel, and the click as the revolver is cocked. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Connor glances over; it’s a teenager, dark hair shaggily trimmed, and his eyes are cold and narrowed. He exits from the aisle, pushing Connor, and he reaches into a pack strapped to his thigh; a handful of meat comes out, and the stranger gives a high pitched two note whistle, short and clipped.

The deady stiffens, corpse forgotten, and its head whips about; the things eyes are nearly white, the slightest bit of seafoam seeping through, and it narrows in on the stranger’s hand. It stands, super tall, and begins a choppy approach; Connor aims his rifle again, and the stranger presses his gun firmer against Connor’s skin, tutting.

“What’d I just say?” As the deady gets closer, the teenager holds his hand out flat and the deady starts eating the meat strips, delicately careful, plucking the strips from the other’s hand.

“What the fuck?” Connor breathes, and the teenager rolls his eyes.

“This is my brother.” As the deady finishes the meat, freeing the other’s hands, the teenager holsters his weapon and wraps a chain, that had been hanging from his belt, around his so-called brother’s waist, locking it with a padlock. “Jason, this is someone you don’t eat; I’m Tim.”

Connor isn’t unused to meeting other survivors; but a survivor accompanied by what appears to be a tamed deady? Connor shakes his head, still gripping tight to his rifle, and slowly inches away from the pair of brothers; Tim goes about cleaning up Jason’s bloody face and, surprisingly, the deady stands still, only grinding his teeth. Tim glances at Connor’s gun.

“You don’t need that you know.”

Connor backs away again. “You’re crazy!”

Tim shrugs, and turns back for the aisle and his deserted shopping basket; Jason follows, stumbling here and there, but completely sedate. Connor, however freaked out, is curious; deadies are completely violent, vicious, insatiable. Yet this one is obedient, compliant, and happily leaves his living brother well...alive…

“How? How did you get it to be non threatening?”

Tim laughs, tosses a can of green beans in the basket, and the deady jolts at the noise, growling; Tim tuts, patting at the other’s head, and he starts piling in other canned foods gently. “I don’t do anything; he’s always been like this.”

“But no other deady is like him!”

“He’s not a deady!” The way he lashes out upsets Jason again, who begins growling and calling out shrilly; Tim takes a breath, to calm himself, and he tugs gently on the chain to draw Jason closer. “He’s not a deady.”

“He very clearly is!” Conor indicates where Jason was feasting, an accusation. “He was eating that person!”

“That person was dead when we came in here; besides, Jason isn’t a deady.”

He’s delusional. Connor says as much, which makes the kid laugh again; yup, utterly delusional.

“I’m not delusional; I just know Jason’s more alive than the deadies.” he draws a knife, grasps Jason’s hand, and slices into the flesh; Jason hisses and pulls away, almost pouting, and…

And he’s bleeding; bleeding red sluggishly, which is wrong for so many reasons because he’s a walking corpse and deadies bleed nothing. They splatter gore, organs, but not blood.

Connor shakes his head; he should tell the rest of his camp to avoid this part of town. There’s some weird goings ons here; Connor backs away.

“It eats people, it’s a deady.”

“Sometimes,” Tim multitasks--speaking, reading the ingredients on a can of soup, and grasping the chain to keep Jason close. “I think we’re more dead than dead people.”

Connor leaves the grocery store and tells his people to stay away; Tim doesn’t mind. It’s safer for Jason when it’s just them; no trigger happy hunters, no deadies who might get him sicker. Tim grabs the basket and moves for the pharmacy; he needs to bandage the wound he inflicted on Jason, and they could always do with some sleeping pills and pain relievers. Jason, somewhere inside, is still human and he needs sleep, but deadies don’t sleep.

Tim learned early it wasn’t good for Jason to go without sleep; he got grumpy, more volatile, hollering and gnashing his teeth. Tim had first tried to get him to swallow sleeping pills, then when that didn’t work he’d crushed them and wrapped a strip of bacon around the powder; it takes four pills to get Jason to rest, so Tim searches for as many pill bottles as he can find.

He tucks three in his backpack, stands, and grabs the basket again; Jason is lurking by the shoe insert machine, and Tim rifles through the inserts next to the machine. He finds one Jason’s size, though he doesn’t know if it’s specially designed for his pressure points, and sits Jason at the blood pressure machine; he pops off Jason’s sneakers and fits the inserts in before slipping them back on.

“There ya go.” Tim smiles, patting at Jason’s knee. “Come on, we’ve got to find a bandage for your hand; don’t give me that look!” Tim tries to stifle a smirk. “You’ll heal quick, like you always do, and you’ll probably forget about it too; besides, how else was I supposed to convince that guy to not kill you?”

He finds a roll of gauze, wraps it about Jason’s hand, and ties it off; he packs the extra in his backpack and takes the basket up again. He tugs on the chain to get Jason’s attention.

“Come on; we should get back home before we run into any other survivors.”

They exit the grocery store, skirting around it to some decrepit apartment buildings tucked away in a wooded area; some deadies linger about in the parking lot between the grocery store and the apartments, but Tim pays them little mind. He gives Jason another handful of meat before they get too close to the others, some chicken strips mixed in with beef chunks, and the deadies only give Tim cursory glances; travelling with Jason masks his humanity, but he still takes precautions. He gives them a fairly wide berth just in case, especially when carrying raw meat back home; and since he always has Jason’s snack bag with him, he tries to be careful always.

Jason grits his teeth at a deady that gets too close for his comfort, and Tim gives a little tug at the chain; at the apartments, Tim takes out his torch to help light the way. Batteries still operate, so he lights the way up the flights of stairs. His backpack weighs heavy, and the basket too is weighted down, but they have to make it to floor 5. Tim chose the top floor for safety reasons; deadies aren’t terribly coordinated to make it up the stairs, which is another reason it takes them so long to get up.

Jason stumbles, and sometimes just totally checks out; it’s easier going down than up, but Tim is patient. Plus, way up here, anytime he cooks the smells get whisked away on the wind. There are other precautions, such as barbed wire and various items piled up to form a blockade; he’d considered putting down booby traps, but Jason wasn’t able to avoid the trips and triggers. There was a wire Tim had strung along the front entrance, and a few along the stairwells, to ring a particular bell in his apartment as an early warning system, but besides that he’d mostly just utilized blockades.

“Never hurts to be prepared,” Tim mutters as he skirts around a table, waits for Jason to follow him, then shoves the table back in place.

After a few more blockades they reach their apartment; set back in the corner, able to overlook both the parking lot and the woods behind them, the apartment is spacious complete with a fire escape on the side of the building. Tim has scavenged the other apartments, though he found little of use since the building had long since been abandoned, but still there’s a mattress and blankets and a tattered couch with surprisingly matching armchairs. The kitchen is equipped with a non-workable fridge and stove, but Tim dragged a generator up so the small electrical stove works and they have some lamps that work too.

All in all, they’re prepared to last a while. Tim’s even gone so far as to rig up a line down to the river in the backwoods, one that can scoop a bucket of water out of the running stream and be pulled up into the apartment. The evening goes slow and quiet; Tim eats a can of room temperature soup while Jason gnaws on a partial carcass Tim had scavenged from the streets earlier that day.

By the light of an electric lantern, Tim reads through a compilation of scary stories; Jason patters around the apartment, bumping into furniture and occasionally pausing by a wall to stare blankly at the world. Finally, it’s time for sleep; Tim secures the door once more, then goes about and shuts the windows. There’s no AC, but at this location there’s a swift breeze; still, it’s safest to keep the windows closed at night. Tim sleeps easier; he gives Jason a powdered strip of meat, drugs to help him sleep, and then secures his brother to the radiator in the corner.

“G’night, Jay.”

Outside, the city shrieks in terror but in here Tim and Jason are quiet.


End file.
